The Summilux-SL 50mm is heavy. Autofocus with the lens is slow. Image quality, according to Leica and many of its users, is reference standard. These are knowns. I live with the former two and enjoy the latter. Anyone who follows these pages knows I’m not too trusting of autofocus in cameras and lenses. In fact,…

A while back, maybe more than once on these pages, I mentioned that much of the R glass I was seeing at the time was not in great shape. The last copies of the 280mm f/4 APO-Telyt-R and 80mm Summilux-R I had were ditched because of their deteriorating condition. With the exception of a 180mm…

Conventional wisdom might lead one to think that it’s necessary to pare down gear weight as one ages. But while it might be a favorable notion, recent experiences taught me that it’s not always necessary. For six weeks of hiking during which I averaged well over 20 kilometers per day, it was necessary for me…

. . . maybe I was a bit harsh in my assessment of the Sigma 17mm f4. Out yesterday to shoot the Asoke intersection, as I’ve done regularly over the past two decades with whatever wide glass I happened to have at the time, I noticed how detailed the image was from corner to corner….

During the past year or two I’ve been heading toward a conclusion that while Leica was without peer when it came to optics and mechanics, they are now without hope when it comes to electronics. But there’s not enough space here to get into that one. After reacquiring an R-Adapter-L and vaguely remembering that there…

Having two days ago picked up an almost new-looking 135mm f2.8 Elmarit-R that’s 46 years old, I found that it wouldn’t focus to infinity at the infinity hard stop. Since an R 28-90mm I’d acquired a few days before was right on the money wide open at 90mm at the infinity hard stop, and not…

A bit over forty years ago I bought my first Sigma lens from Willoughby’s in New York City. It was a slow 80-200mm zoom that was less than half the price of the comparable Yashica model, which I couldn’t affort at the time. Images from the lens looked okay to my newbie eyes. Until I…

. . . well, at least this once. Or more if I feel the need to keep myself reminded of what I think. After passing the better part of a year with the fewest gear changes in recent memory, the itch for some changes needs a scratch. A big part of it is that the…